For entrepreneurs who aspire to make a mark in their industry, using existing marketing strategies might set the fine line between business triumph and bankruptcy.
While allocating a marketing budget is important for all businesses, devising an effective marketing strategy is equally essential to gain customers and generate sales.
Knowing the current business trends is also relevant. What type of marketing will best suit your business? As we embrace the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, there is no surprise that most of the spurring business drivers through 2022 are technology-related.
The exploitation of our existing technology, such as the adaptation of user and entity big data analytics, as well as advancements in artificial intelligence and cloud technology are just some of the tactical approaches for advancement in the business sector. More importantly, the reliance on almost everyone to their smartphones is one of the biggest factors why sprouting business trends are dictated by technology.
Running a thriving business is more than just about selecting a suitable market or having high quality products. It comes with leveraging the right kind of marketing strategy to effectively reach your target audience and convert them into potential clients.
The hard part is the dilemma of choosing which part of marketing you should emphasize more: traditional marketing or digital marketing?
What is traditional marketing?
Traditional marketing refers to the conventional way of reaching out to a semi-targeted audience with various offline advertising and promotional methods. Traditional marketing typically involves telemarketing, outdoor billboards and flyers. It also includes direct mails through postcards, brochures, letters, print marketing through newspapers and magazines, broadcast communication through television and radio, and referral marketing.
Over the years, traditional marketing has had a proven high success rate with its ability to reach out to places where internet connection is scarce. The influence of the printed word still lives up to expectations. Print is often viewed by consumers as more trustworthy and credible.
When traditional advertising is created and executed well, it can produce great results and generate more sales for your brand. However, despite the fact that traditional marketing is still effective, technology in today’s world has dramatically evolved. Digital marketing is creating more possibilities for businesses. Digital marketing can help businesses connect to their target audience in a more efficient and convenient manner.
What is digital marketing?
Digital marketing encompasses all types of advertising and marketing efforts done online via the Internet or an electronic device. Businesses leverage digital platforms to connect with prospective customers through mobile phones, computers, or tablets. Tactics using these platforms include email marketing, social media influencing, blog posting, pay per click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO), and content creation.
Designed to reach a large variety of consumers, digital marketing has replaced most traditional marketing tactics with its exceptional ability to market on a much faster and larger scale. Digital advertising offers a wide range of options and strategies for businesses to get creative and experiment, especially if your business is a startup or you’re on a tight budget.
This marketing method gives you a variety of ways to build brand awareness and gain a following. With the Internet’s limitless bounds and accessibility, engaging in digital advertising is becoming crucial for both small and big businesses. Knowing how to create an effective social media marketing plan is one of the best places to start.
Where to get more sales?
With current business trends leaning on digital marketing, it is apparent that traditional marketing is gradually losing its traction among business owners and entrepreneurs.
Digital marketing continues to introduce new and exciting technologies, while traditional methods are slowly fading in the background. But for some brands, particularly well-established ones, traditional marketing may be too costly to ignore, especially when they have established a huge offline audience.
However, for many small businesses that are mostly startups trying to make a mark on a tight budget, digital marketing can prove to be a saving grace with fewer risk and great rewards.
Traditional marking or digital marketing?
With traditional marketing, it is easy to reach a local or regional audience. However, the drawback is that you can’t go beyond that reach. In many ways, digital marketing offers a lot more without compromising efficiency and convenience. Digital marketing guarantees a bigger audience range. It is also infinitely cheaper and its results are much easier to measure.
This type of marketing promises a higher level of customer engagement. It provides value to your target audience through content marketing and other marketing solutions.
In this tech-oriented generation, your business can easily go viral in just one click. Your advertisements become instantly shareable, giving your audience an option on how they want to view your content online. Since traditional marketing is limited to one-way communication by showcasing a product, event, or service and leaving it at that, there’s no room for feedback and relationship-building.
A great business knows how crucial it is to connect with its audience. A successful business offers solutions to the wants and needs of their audience to the point that they practically do the marketing for your business.
Today, people spend most of their time online, so it just makes sense to connect with consumers via social networks, email, blogs, and other online platforms to enhance the visibility of your business. However, this doesn’t mean that you should forgo traditional marketing altogether. If you have the budget and it works for your business, then you can mix it up with newer digital marketing tactics. Digital marketing poses very little risk. You can always combine the two strategies to leverage your business ventures and generate greater rewards.
The world is now digital
The world has transitioned into a digital environment. There is very little you can do about it. Investing in digital campaigns is common sense with the rise of the digital age. If you have tried traditional marketing before and have not seen the rapid growth results you wanted, then digital marketing is the way forward so you can keep up in today’s hyper-competitive world.
This guest blog article was written by Aubrey Barcena, a digital marketer from Growth Rocket, a boutique digital agency based in Los Angeles with a home in Manila.